Do this, and you garuntee 90% of the population would gear themselves to be self healing fighters...

There goes interdependence right off the deep end...

This is simply not true, and the reason why is already contained in Jeff's post, Callia's post and my post, so I'm not going to repeat it.

Sorry, Zen. Afraid you're going to have to repeat it. I went back and reread all three posts you mentioned, and the closest to an argument against my belief is an expression that a 1000 rank fighter will always be better than a 500 rank fighter, which is kind of a "well, duh" kind of statement that has nothing to do with what the training in question might be.

As Cin says, Troilus is hardly the same thing as a fighter being able to train to go woob-woob-woob with his own moonstone. But given the chance to get that useable moonstone, most fighters would drop fighters like a bad habit.

I do like how you take quotes out of context and ignore the bits that don't help you be contrary.

Sareth ignored, but Zen also wrote:While I understand Jeff's point about the advancement of the species, I'm not convinced such a profound change would be good for CL, at least until the number of players is significantly higher than it is now.

and wrote:I also think there is beauty in the way training one skill affects other skills, and there would be a bunch of thought and coding required to run this across the board. Would training Faustus ruin your Balthus? Would training Darkus ruin your Awaria?

Pretty clear that, I understand that this would be a different game, and we're really just fantasizing here, eh?

What I was suggesting, by implication (the argument you ignored but in a later post said wasn't made), is that one place (there are others) you could balance up "JeffRayZenLord" (thanks, Cinn, has a nice ring to it) is in how trainers interrelate. Training Respia could kill your Regia, or vice versa.

Obviously...patently obviously...this profound a change in the game we love is not going to happen. It is a completely different game. I don't know why you all get so exercised when we dream of what could be done with the CL engine.

And, before a topic police person comes and points out that the thread is not about cross training, let me point out that the thread is already, what, 11 pages, and it went to hell topic wise ages ago.

Dreaming is not allowed?

Last edited by zen on Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Callia wrote: As I've said, I'd like to see more of those structures be social or political, and more of them be under direct player control however.

I have to disagree with this. A game should be fun, not about asskissing, folks do that enough in the real world... but to have to do it to get ahead/have fun/whatever in a game? No way. This political/social advancement structure is the only thing that I REALLY hate about bards/mystics.

No insult intended, but if you're so oppsed to having to work together with other people and cooperate as a group, why are you playing CL? It's specifically aimed at groups, cooperation, and political/social interaction.

The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necissarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed.
-Alexander Hamilton

This is simply not true, and the reason why is already contained in Jeff's post, Callia's post and my post, so I'm not going to repeat it.

Sorry, Zen. Afraid you're going to have to repeat it. I went back and reread all three posts you mentioned, and the closest to an argument against my belief is an expression that a 1000 rank fighter will always be better than a 500 rank fighter, which is kind of a "well, duh" kind of statement that has nothing to do with what the training in question might be.

As Cin says, Troilus is hardly the same thing as a fighter being able to train to go woob-woob-woob with his own moonstone. But given the chance to get that useable moonstone, most fighters would drop fighters like a bad habit.

I do like how you take quotes out of context and ignore the bits that don't help you be contrary.

If folk hadn't been trimming this sub-discussion, the quotes alone would take up an entire page by themselves...

Sareth ignored, but Zen also wrote:While I understand Jeff's point about the advancement of the species, I'm not convinced such a profound change would be good for CL, at least until the number of players is significantly higher than it is now.

This has nothing really to do with whether folk would train such that they'd be able to become self healing fighters. All it states is the class-less concept's a bad idea. If anything, the idea of a self healing fighter is part of the reason it'd be bad for CL...

and wrote:I also think there is beauty in the way training one skill affects other skills, and there would be a bunch of thought and coding required to run this across the board. Would training Faustus ruin your Balthus? Would training Darkus ruin your Awaria?

Pretty clear that, I understand that this would be a different game, and we're really just fantasizing here, eh?

What I was suggesting, by implication (the argument you ignored but in a later post said wasn't made), is that one place (there are others) you could balance up "JeffRayZenLord" (thanks, Cinn, has a nice ring to it) is in how trainers interrelate. Training Respia could kill your Regia, or vice versa.

I guess I misunderstood this. You did give your reasoning. My appologees. Never-the-less, Troilus does not negatively balance the other fighter skills in any significant way. Other wise no fighter would train it. But let's grant that all other healer skills would be 180 degrees off from that precedent. We'll state that healer skills and fighter skills, kill one another one for one. Fine. 200 fighter ranks and 100 healer ranks results in a fighter with a practical 100 fighter ranks and a 300 rank slaughter level. No one will bother mixing their skills then, which puts us right back where we started, with clearly defined classes, we just don't label them any more. Or, they counter at 2 healer kills 1 fighter. You still get a negative total effect by training the mix. Or, they don't counter one another significantly. In this case we get a person with 200 fighter ranks, 100 healer ranks, and the ability to tackle places that challenge a 200 rank fighter without needing a healer to save his bacon. The only people unlikely to do this are the rank obsessive types, who'd rather train 100% fighter ranks to minimize their slaughter rate, knowing they can bring someone else along as healer.

So it still seems to me this idea would either create the same classes we have simply by mathematical necessity, or would eliminate any interdependance out side of specialists who want to tailor for a race to the wall.

Obviously...patently obviously...this profound a change in the game we love is not going to happen. It is a completely different game. I don't know why you all get so exercised when we dream of what could be done with the CL engine.

And, before a topic police person comes and points out that the thread is not about cross training, let me point out that the thread is already, what, 11 pages, and it went to hell topic wise ages ago.

Dreaming is not allowed?

Oh, I'm not exercised about this. At least not in the definition you mean. I agree this will never happen. So for me, this is nothing more than an enjoyable mental exercise... a trip into what if land. If you were under the impression this was upsetting me in any way, all I can do is appologise for misleading you. I'm just having fun debating a theory. I hope it's the same for you.

The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necissarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed.
-Alexander Hamilton

Callia wrote: As I've said, I'd like to see more of those structures be social or political, and more of them be under direct player control however.

I have to disagree with this. A game should be fun, not about asskissing, folks do that enough in the real world... but to have to do it to get ahead/have fun/whatever in a game? No way. This political/social advancement structure is the only thing that I REALLY hate about bards/mystics.

Well.. that begs the question: What is fun?

The answer is of course that what's fun for different people is different.

At one end of the spectrum, we have the immature gamer, who plays stand-alone games in "god" mode. He wins every time (big surprise), eventually, even he gets bored with it. At the other end, we have gamers who go out of their way to disadvantage themselves vs the starting conditions, in order to increase their personal sense of satisfaction if they can succeed.

Then there's what HGM was always trying to explain (usually unsuccessfully). What's fun, (that is to say) what you end up pouring time and energy into, what you look back on later as a rewarding experience, isn't necessarily what you might think it was in the beginning. His point being that we're not necessarily good judges of what we find fun. We think we know what's fun, (a subjective judgment) but we're not necessarily right. A lot of people got insulted whenever he tried to explain this. Look at salt and fat, we love salt and fat, but they're not very good for us.

As the old adage goes, good times are easily written about, quickly described, and not very interesting to read. Conflict, challenge, trials, tribulations, etc. are more interesting.

There's actually been a fair amount of study put into the nature and culture of MMORPG's. You're probably aware of Bartle's basic bestiary of MMORPG players: Killer, Socializer, Achiever, and Explorer. He's written a more complicated one for his book Designing Virtual Worlds but I'm not familiar enough with that one to use it here. The basic one will suffice I think. The idea is that an MMORPG requires a continuum of players. You can skew the numbers to some degree, but for a game to survive in the long term, it must present "fun" across the spectrum of player types. If fun is too narrowly aimed, then you lose player diversity, and the social structure of the game collapses.

What's my point? My point is that any MMORPG needs to have more stuff in it's make up, than you, the individual player, will find fun. It's also important to understand, that if something frustrates me a little, but you enjoy it a whole lot, then it's probably a good thing to have it in the game.

Now we come to Clan Lord. Clan Lord was constructed with you, Nightbird, the fighter who likes to hunt and doesn't care about that other crap, in mind. (And I'm just using you as a generic example, nothing personal). The designers expect that about 60% of the players will want to be fighters, and that close to 40% will want to be healers. They also figured that there'd be a small percentage of players, 2 to 5% perhaps, who might want a different kind of challenge. The other aspect of Clan Lord, is that it's a Role Playing Game. The designers insist on that. They don't make everyone role play all the time, they don't even make most people role play most of the time. But... once in a while, part of living in the CL world, means occasionally being forced into contact with RP elements, whether you like it or not.

When I ask for more social and political structures, I do so because that's what I like, that's what I find fun. I want more chances to role play, and to have that role play mean something within the larger context that is the CL world. (As opposed to most of what's referred to as Sylvan Melodrama which generally only has impact by mutual consent) I'm not suggesting that the things that you enjoy should be removed or even changed a lot (although honestly, I like the idea that even RW's get shaken out of their rut by the CL world once in a while). What I would like to see, is more options for players to get involved in socialization and politics if they wish to. No one in CL has to be a Bard or a Mystic, but some of us actually do "enjoy" that kind of stuff. I say "enjoy" in quotes because a lot of it isn't what you'd call "fun." However, it is a challenge, and I enjoy the challenge, which is the point.

One of the greatest opportunities presented by the MMORPG environment, is the chance to role-play social and political structures out. MMORPG's are frankly just about the perfect environment for it, but most games are about what we call "ranks" in CL. The person with the most ranks wins. But MMORPG's are environments where you have to deal with other people. I don't want to have to race for ranks against kids less than half my age who can play 24/7 and can get more ranks in a month than I'm going to gather in a year, I want other ways to have an impact on the game world. You, the fighter, should always be able to go out with your friends and beat stuff up, but I, the mystic, want to be able to play chess with the dragon. I want a game world that I have to think and negotiate my way through.

I'm also not suggesting that every social or political structure should be as strict as Bards or Mystics either, there should be more casual ones, ones with less scope. More influence, but less control.

Last edited by Callia on Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

By the same token, almost every fighter would train at least a little bit of healing skills, if only to get the "default built in" skills that every new healer gets. Who can't think of a situation where "just a bit more Horus" would have meant the difference between continuing the hunt, and going home?

This si the only flaw in the CL trainer structure that prevents classless characters.

I'm not going to produce any kind of exhaustive list, but I don't think that's the only one, just the most glaring.

Kojiro wrote:Moonstones come with around 200 ranks BUILT-IN. You could easily change it so that anyone can get a moonstone, a dagger, a skrystal, whatever, but that moonstone comes with zero healing ability until you train it. Hell, you could make it so you have to put 50 ranks in Healerus before you can even train with any healer trainers.

Play Avernum and see what I'm talking about. It has a great trainer system.

I have. Jeff Vogel's games are wonderful. In fact, I was one of the beta testers for Exile III.

But.....

They're stand-alone, they don't necessarily translate to an MMORPG. There's a tendency for game designers to require differentiation between character classes, and a tendency for players to try to circumvent that, using so called Bot support characters is very common.

The game environment should be rich enough that the support character is fun to play too. If you're players are trying to lug support characters around without actually playing them, then you've done something wrong IMO. (Shadowbane being a prime example).

Callia wrote: As I've said, I'd like to see more of those structures be social or political, and more of them be under direct player control however.

I have to disagree with this. A game should be fun, not about asskissing, folks do that enough in the real world... but to have to do it to get ahead/have fun/whatever in a game? No way. This political/social advancement structure is the only thing that I REALLY hate about bards/mystics.

No insult intended, but if you're so oppsed to having to work together with other people and cooperate as a group, why are you playing CL? It's specifically aimed at groups, cooperation, and political/social interaction.

Working together to explore an area, battle a tough monster, etc is one thing, but having to "work together" or more accurately "perform oral" to advance your character (ie becoming a bard or advancing to mystic status) is bullshit in a game.

NB: I can't speak for the mystics, not being one, but I am a bard, so let me address your comments from that perspective.

Having to get the approval of your peers to become a bard is a very, very good thing IMNSHO. If becoming a bard was the result of some mechanical quest that had no peer (or GM) review, the lands would likely become flooded with folk who loved playing P. Diddy or Shanniah Twain as often and loudly as possible. Worse, you would have folk who are completely tone deaf playing their latest "masterpiece" in TC, to the horror of all.

Peer review may not be perfect, and may involve some degree of appeasment, but in the case of the bards it protects both the game environment, and the bards.

The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necissarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed.
-Alexander Hamilton

Callia wrote: As I've said, I'd like to see more of those structures be social or political, and more of them be under direct player control however.

I have to disagree with this. A game should be fun, not about asskissing, folks do that enough in the real world... but to have to do it to get ahead/have fun/whatever in a game? No way. This political/social advancement structure is the only thing that I REALLY hate about bards/mystics.

Well.. that begs the question: What is fun?

The answer is of course that what's fun for different people is different.

You are, of course, right. Still, just because it's fun for someone to run around punching people in the face, doesn't mean its OK to do it. Or more accurate to this situation... Just because FM V doesn't like JM X he has the power to deny JM X from advancing, solely based on his own childish need to "have fun" by messing with others.

THAT is what I can't stand, if YOU enjoy putting people under your boot and "keepin a brotha down" then you definetly chose the right profession. I can accept that CL is already tainted in this light with mystics and to a lesser degree, bards, but if you intend to spread even a tiny bit of this to any other area of the game, I would fight it to my last breath.

Callia wrote:No one in CL has to be a Bard or a Mystic, but some of us actually do "enjoy" that kind of stuff. I say "enjoy" in quotes because a lot of it isn't what you'd call "fun."

I've seen more than a few bards audition and been turned down, and for no apparent good reason... I've seen these folks' "dreams" be crushed by a few pompous jerks. I am not a bard, nor are any of my characters bards, but I am a musician OOC, and 9/10 bardquestors I've seen turned down showed the necessary skills for creating music, knowledge of time, rhythms, and so on and so forth. Believe it or not, at one point, I wanted to be a bard, but after wrestling with CLTH (and it winning, damn that thing isn't/wasn't very friendly) and watching so many sour auditions, I said to hell with it, I had no desire to participate in something like that. I realize that in this example, the bard's guild is in place to help prevent nonsensical playings of the batman theme, or running around playing C 1000 times in TC, but I just don't think that even 1 of the 9 that were turned down would've gone on to do any snerty things with bard instruments.

And on the Mystic front, A mystic pal of mine who was denied promotion for so long (for no good reason other than he didn't want to kiss ass) eventually left the game, with that being a major reason for leaving. What in the hell?

Anyhow, if you just want more reasons for people to interact, thats great, I'd love that too. But, if you're looking for more outlets to exert power over other players, no.

I'll admit I've been away most of the last two years (rotten terrorists, messing with my playing schedual), but durring those occasions I participated in an audition as a judge, the discussions about folk not made questors almost always centered on their music. There were a few times I recall character being an issue, but these were cases where people like Zaroff were attempting to become bards (and I doubt anyone wanted to see him gain power over bagpipes...) Not knowing who we're talking about, (and I'm not asking to reveal anything ugly in public), I don't really know how to answer your comments.

/shrug.

The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necissarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed.
-Alexander Hamilton

The last thing CL needs is more things like the mystics or bards guilds. They are by far the worst designed part of CL. And mystics are the worse of the 2.

The idea behind how to become a mystic is so flawed that it strips any desire for most sane people to even want to consider it. And even after you finally make it all you end up with is chaffed knees and a brown toung.

I have never seen more petty bullshit in a game than whats centered around the mystic guild. Being a Doorman is not that special, it should work like the other 2 classes. Just because someone is an asshole (or has a spine they arnt willing to bend) doesnt mean they shouldnt be able to become a mystic.

If you make mystics a reqirement for places (and thank god this has gone out of favor) then anyone should be able to become one.

I realize there is no realistic possibility that CL will switch to a classless system. I keep harping on this issue because I have three goals. First, if there is ever a CLv2, I want to make sure the designers ask "should we have classes?" rather than jumping straight to "which classes should we have?". Second, just because we have classes doesn't mean we have to continue down that path with subclasses. It isn't too late to convert those into something better. Third, even if the GM's are committed to subclasses for fighters and healers, that doesn't mean the mystics have to be drug down the same hole. The mystic guild differs from the other guilds in many other ways, so it's reasonable to consider making the advanced mystic skills (sub)classless as well.

On the sociopolitical aspect of mystic promotion:

Speaking as someone who likes the "knowledge" aspect of the guild, but dislikes the sociopolitical aspect, well, that's the way things are sometimes. If you've ever had to deal with real life politics at any level, you realize that if you want to achieve certain goals, social networking and politics are part of the price you are going to have to pay. You don't have to like it, but that's how it is, whether you are trying to rise up the corporate ladder, get a new law passed by your city council, or get very far in the mystic guild.

The best face I can put on it is, it's just a skill, like any other. If you don't already have it, you can use a MMORPG like CL to learn it, and take what you've learned back into the real world with you. It's a useful skill to have, even if you only use it for your own self-defense against others who are trying to use this same skill against you.

On sucking up, brown-nosing, and favoritism in the mystic guild:

A stubbornly popular myth, but just not true. In fact, the opposite is closer to reality, since in any conversation I've had with other FM where this topic has come up, sucking up and brown nosing is about the fastest way to turn off a Mystic from considering you. For that matter, if any FM did do a promotion for this reason and the other FM found out about it, it would likely taint that student's future chances for a very long time (not to mention the social cost to the FM who did it).

As for favoritism, my friends can attest that I am, if anything, harder on my friend's mystic candidates than I am on characters I don't know, because I don't want them tainted with accusations of favoritism.